Age of Ultron - Chapter 1: A New Soldier
by Katie Trillion
Summary: When the Avengers storm a Sokovian HYDRA base, they don't expect the experimented children that accompany it - Wanda and Pietro Maximoff. But there's someone else at the base too. A young girl. Someone we've never seen before.
1. Chapter 1

Age Of Ultron Fanfiction: **BEFORE AND AFTER**

The ten-year-old twins were never meant to have been found.

But somehow they survived the explosion, the deadly rain of falling masonry and plaster, the wave of orange fire that rolled through the building and the constant, on-edge, icy terror of the unexploded shell that was lying in the dust less than a metre from their faces, looking deceptively still and silent. The fear made their blood feel like ice, frozen in their veins.

There was red writing on the side of the shell, and although part of the writing was half-obscured by brick dust and it was written in a stupid font, the twins could still read it: _STARK INDUSTRIES._

"We're going to be alright,"the elder twin (by twelve minutes) would whisper to his skinny, shivering, dark-haired sister every time the floor shook, every time the shell knocked against a brick, every time they froze like deer in headlights, waiting for the inevitable explosion that would blow them apart like their parents, that always seemed to not come just to prolong the twins' terror. "I'll keep you safe, Wanda, whatever happens."

She would nod, smile shakily, and try not to look scared. They were both terrified, and both trying not to show it. "I know, Pietro. I know you'll keep us safe. We're alive, aren't we?"

The slowly collapsing building creaked, the sound of the tortured, twisted metal supports and slowly crumbling brickwork filling the air.

With a sudden jerk, the floor shook and a network of spidering cracks spread across the wall opposite them. Then the hole in the centre of the room made a cracking sound like ice falling off a the side of a glacier, then got wider, sending chunks of floor, insulation and the few pieces of furniture that were left into the dark, charred abyss. The shell fell, turning over and over, but somehow, mercifully, remained still, silent, and unexploded. It disappeared into the blackness.

A few flickers of orange flame swirled in the darkness below, then the floor shook again, the cracks in the wall widening and deepening, sending flakes of plaster  
hole as they could, trying to keep their balance on what was left of the still-shuddering floor. Wanda was screaming, her voice nearly inaudible over the noise of the building, her dark hair flying. She stumbled as the edge of the hole caught up with her, slipping and nearly falling, but Pietro grabbed her arm and pulled her back onto the little of the floor that was left intact.

"Pietro," she whispered, "We're going to die, aren't we?"

The shaking stopped with another creak of supports, as suddenly as it had started. The building was going to collapse entirely soon; they both knew that. They would be buried under the metal and concrete, and no one would care.

"No, we're not," Pietro tried to reassure her, knowing that he was lying. "We're not going to die here."

Suddenly there was the _whop_-_whop _sound of helicopter blades from outside, making more white-and-grey dust fall from the ceiling. Wanda took a step forwards. The wall shook again, then smashed inwards. A man wearing an odd-looking monocle stepped through the jagged hole, brushing grey-white dust from his dark jacket. Behind him, a large black helicopter with black-tinted windows was hovering close to the hole, its blades turning so fast they were just a black blur.

"Wanda and Pietro Maximoff?" The man said, but he seemed to know who they were already and didn't really need an answer. When they just looked at him, he sighed and looked at the watch on his wrist.

"I can get you out of here. I can keep you alive. The fact that you have survived so far is in itself a miracle, but I doubt you could survive what is going to happen now. The shell that was due to explode is delayed, but it is set to go off. Due to the ensuing explosion, this building will collapse in one minute and six seconds. That is how long you have to make your choice."

Wanda and Pietro looked at each other. The floor shook under their feet again, but they kept their balance. The man looked at his watch.

"Fifty-five seconds now. Decide."

"We should leave here." Wanda whispered, not looking at her twin. "We can't die... not now our parents are gone."

"That's right," the man said, not taking his eyes off his watch, which was ticking softly on his wrist, slicing away the seconds of their lives. "Your parents would want you to live. Thirty-seven seconds."

_Tick. Tick. Tick. _Was it the man's watch ticking, or was it the lethal explosive that was waiting below their feet, threatening and invisible like a crocodile hiding in murky water?

_Tick. Tick. Tick. _

Wanda looked at Pietro. Precious seconds poured by as indecision charged the air between them as though with static electricity. Finally he nodded, and the twins followed the man back onto the helicopter. As soon as its passengers were accounted for, the black machine turned, and, blades tearing at the air, began to move away from the stricken tower block.

Exactly nineteen seconds later, the explosion happened, the shell finally completing its deadly work. The force of the blast pushed the helicopter further away from the building, but the helicopter was bulky enough that it didn't capsize or break apart in mid-air.

The entire building finally collapsed, the supports, rafters and rooms groaning under the heat and force for a second, then giving way, driving the building deep into the ground, pushed under by its own weight. The twisted bodies of Wanda and Pietro's parents were buried underneath the wreckage, never to be found.

It was a short flight from the wreckage of the tower block to the Sokovian HYDRA complex, and Wolfgang Strucker was sure that, when they got back and ran some tests on the twins, HYDRA would have found the people they needed to continue their experiments on enhancing humans. No one had survived their tests so far, but that wasn't a problem. There were always more people.

Strucker checked his watch again, looked around the helicopter again, then began to study the twins as they sat uncomfortably; like him, they were strapped in. For safety, of course, both his and their own.

The twins were both a quite a bit skinnier than they should have been, but this was more apparent in the girl, Wanda, who had stringy, shoulder-length dark hair and pale skin, which was coated in a layer of dirt and plaster dust; there was a thin cut high up on her cheekbone that was slowly trickling blood down her face. She stared defiantly up at Strucker, and he smiled. She looked away. The other twin, Pietro, had pale blonde hair but dark eyes exactly like Wanda's. He had his arm around his twin's shoulder, and was whispering in her ear. Strucker heard him say, "We'll be alright."

Strucker almost laughed. Obviously spotting the change in his expression, Pietro's head snapped up.

"Who are you?" he asked, looking at Strucker, his voice full of suspicion.

Strucker smiled, making the easy mental switch from English to Sokovian. Strucker knew from reading the twins' file that both of them could speak English, though admittedly accented, but he humoured them, as well as putting his natural gift for languages to good use. "My name is Wolfgang Strucker. I am a friend."

Wanda fiddled with one of the straps on her harness, her eyes downcast as she picked at the loose thread, then looked at Strucker again. "How do we know you are a friend? We have never seen you before."

_Interesting, _Strucker thought, _they are very close siblings. We must make sure both of them either survive the tests, or that both of them die. To lose one and keep the other could be damaging for whoever is left. _

"I have just saved your lives," he said, in the calm, patient tone that adults use to explain that one plus one equals two to a small child. "That provokes at least a little trust, surely."

"It should," Wanda said, her soft voice as suspicious as her twin's and also slightly accusing. "But we don't know what you're going to do with us now."

"Exactly." Strucker whispered. Below them, the Sokovian landscape, the sea of trees on the lower slopes of the mountains turning red and gold in early autumn, was blotted by the stark concrete buildings that were the HYDRA base.

The helicopter descended towards a landing pad that was also the roof of the largest building.

"You see, when I said you could have your lives," Strucker said, as the twins undid their harness straps and followed him down from the roof and into the largest building, "I didn't say you could have anything else, either."

The steel doors swung shut behind them, hinges grinding, but hit the concrete with echoing and somehow ominous silence.

The blazing red-gold of the autumn trees passed into the thick white blizzards of winter, the falling snow coating everything with a layer of white; the pine trees shook and nearly buckled under the pure weight of snow.

I awake from a dream of falling. For a second, I think that it hasn't ended, because it's dark, the lack of light bunched all around me, thick and oppressive. I try to breathe slowly and calm down, but then a voice emanates from the darkness.

"Awake already? After three bullets to the chest? Amazing." The words are definitely English, but strangely accented.

My eyes adjust to the darkness slowly, until I can see an indistinct shadowy figure sitting in a corner.

_Damn. _This is going to be a terrible line, but here goes. "Where am I?"

"Sokovia, in Northern Europe." I immediately know from the voice that the person is a man. "We have travelled a long way from England. Are you absolutely sure that you haven't already been enhanced?"

I try to sit up, but pain shoots through my chest from where the bullets hit. I grit my teeth against the scream that's climbing up my throat. "I told you, I don't even know what _enhanced _means."

A glint of light refracts off something in the man's hand - a watch face, the plain black hands ticking towards six o'clock.

_Tick. Tick. Tick._

The ticking of the watch is faster now, the noise a continuous unbroken hum that vibrates and echoes in my ears. _Tickticktick. _It sounds like the death rattle of a machine gun, heard from far away.

_No. _Not again. Pain thumps through my chest again, making me gasp. The ticking of the watch is keeping pace with my heartbeat, fast, jumpy and panicked. I will it to calm down, but my pulse just gets faster.

"What is this?" I ask, trying to stop my voice going shrill with sudden fear. The man looks up.

"This is HYDRA, Emma."

Then the blackness closes in around my vision like a camera lens, until I can only see the light refracting off the man's watch, then nothing.

_I can't breathe - it hurts - can't breathe - Pietro, help me - it hurts - Pietro, anyone, help me - _

Pietro Maximoff heard his sister screaming and the telepathic images and words inside his head. The telepathy was a recent development that had started since the very first of the tests; every time it happened, it was as though he was his twin, and when he was being tested, he could feel Wanda's mind brushing his. Suddenly and without warning, Wanda's feelings washed over him again.

_It felt as though molten steel bands were tightening across her chest, constricting her breathing to strangulated gasps and making her skin burn. She couldn't release her grip on the gem in the Chitauri staff, and from the point where her fingers touched it, electric shocks seemed to run through her veins, making her body jolt and shudder. She could see wisps of scarlet magic beginning to gather around her fingers, accompanied by a sudden burst of pure agony. She screamed._

_Please - make it stop - I can't keep it together anymore - please, anyone, help me, please - PIETRO!_

The girl's piercing, agonised scream reverberated around the corridors.

"Wanda! Wanda!" Pietro shouted. _Oh God, if she's dead, if they've killed her - _but Pietro just knew that his twin was alive; their minds were practically soldered together now.

_I'm alright. _His twin's faint thought sounded in his head, then Pietro sensed that she'd lost consciousness.

They rebuilt me.

HYDRA.

I owe them now. Owe them my life.

But they did other things as well.

I hate them.

_I need them. _

HYDRA.

Wanda Maximoff was deeply involved in fabricating vision after vision for the Avengers, readying them for when the band of heroes tried to invade the Sokovian base, as they surely would. They had attacked base after base after the complete fiasco of last summer.

She was sure that she had a satisfactory vision for the so-called genius Tony Stark and another, much more disturbing one for Steve Rogers. Bruce Banner - she'd got the perfect one for him. The rage that accompanied his Hulk form was simple to bend and twist to her will. Clint Barton had a wife and two young children. His wife was expecting another child. The perfect scenario to torture him with.

And as for Natasha Romanoff... she was easy, so easy. What HYDRA had done to her, making her into an assassin, mutilating her body to make her ready for war, had just made the woman's mind easier to understand, and ultimately easier to break. In her head, Wanda looked through what she'd accomplished, confident from reading HYDRA's thorough files that the visions were correct.

_Yes. _They were perfect.

Steve Rogers saw the girl before she saw him. Then she turned, and Steve caught a glimpse of dark red hair cut short and a glint of metal from beneath the hood of her... damn, what did modern people call it... hoodie. He really hated the twenty-first century at times.

Then the girl saw him - how could she miss the red-white-and-blue suit, even in the swirling snow. Steve saw that the fingers of her right hand, just visible where she'd stuck her hands in her pockets, were silvery metal.

"Hey - wait - "

She turned and ran. Steve swore vehemently under his breath. From the earpiece that was buzzing in his ear, he heard Tony say "Language, Cap," and a soft chuckle that might have been Natasha.

"Shut up, Stark. We have another enhanced to deal with, young, female. Ability unknown."

Then the wall behind him crumbled. Steve turned, and gasped. The red-haired girl behind him didn't just have a metal arm. One side of her face was metallic, and her electronic eye was clicking softly. She smiled.

"What are you?" Steve said. This was so much worse than Bucky. The girl couldn't have been more than sixteen, but Steve knew from experience how terrifyingly strong that metal arm could be.

"I'm not sure anymore, Steve Rogers."

Then she collapsed. Blood stained the snow, but not much. Tentatively, Steve took a step forwards. The girl was unconscious, and blood trickled from a thin cut across her palm, maybe from one of Clint's arrows. _She was switched off, _he realised.

"One enhanced to be taken in for study," he said into the comms.

"The female?" Natasha.

"Yes. Some of the Winter Soldier technology is also here as well."

"Excellent - I mean, then take it. I've always wanted to fiddle around with all their little magic tricks." Tony.

"Fine."

Steve picked up the girl.

Twenty minutes later, they were flying home in the Quinjet. The girl hadn't woken up yet, but Jarvis hadn't known what to make of her other than search up her appearance.

"Her name is Emma Woods. She is currently aged sixteen years and three months... possibly. She disappeared, presumed dead, from her hometown in England in 1941 after a bomb hit her house..." the interface trailed off.

"Nineteen forty-one..." Steve muttered. He remembered that HYDRA had been using cryogenics for decades.

Natasha was sitting next to the girl, her hand on the cold metal of Emma's right arm, which was jerking and twitching as the girl moaned in her sleep. Emma's electronic eye was whirring and clicking in its metal socket, but they'd blindfolded her as a precaution, so hopefully HYDRA wasn't seeing anything past the thick black cloth that covered her hazel/electric eyes.

"She's something we've never seen before," Natasha said, addressing Bruce, who was sitting in a corner and attempting to meditate. He looked up, then said to the room at large: "Is there a precedent? Jarvis?"

"No, sir; nothing precise at any rate. A possible example is James Buchanan Barnes, also known as the Winter Soldier. He was given a similar kind of technology, although he was not enhanced."

"Thanks, Jarvis," Steve said, his voice sarcastic. He'd flinched a little at the mention of his still-missing friend.

"She is an innocent mortal," Thor said, absently switching Mjolnir from one hand to the other. "It is our duty to help her."

Tony walked across to Natasha, pulled up a chair and sat down, glaring at Steve. "You know, Cap, when you said _technology_, I thought you meant an actual machine, not some random girl."

"She _is_ technology, Stark. She told me - she told me that she didn't know what she was anymore."

Suddenly Emma gasped. Her metal hand came up and closed around Tony's wrist with a vice-like grip; the genius billionaire philanthropist jumped back, cursing under his breath (at least partly), but the girl didn't loosen her fingers and Tony's wrist nearly broke.

"Ow! C-!"

Natasha could tell that Emma's eyes were open beneath the blindfold; she knew exactly how Emma felt, terrified and in the dark, not knowing where she was or how she'd got there. The girl's breathing became fast and panicked. She tried to pull the cloth away with her undamaged left hand, but Natasha held her arm while carefully prising Emma's metal fingers away from Tony's wrist.

"Hey." Natasha whispered, hoping the girl could hear her. "It's okay. Just let go of Stark's wrist, and we'll take off the blindfold."

The girl immediately released her grip on Tony. Natasha undid the blindfold. Emma blinked with one eye. The other was covered by her hand, which muffled the clicking of the electronics.

"Don't want them seeing this," Emma said. "They'll assume I'm still switched off if I stay like this."

"Do you know what your ability is, Emma?" Natasha asked.

"The ability to repair and replicate damaged cells, and possibly alter the molecular structure of solid objects." She sounded like she was parroting something else.

"A healer."

"I suppose so."


	2. Chapter 2: My Name is Medea

Age of Ultron Fanfiction Part Two: **HURT ME**

When they got back to Stark Tower, Emma followed them off the jet, still covering her eye with her hand.

"Mr Stark," she said, "Have you got a screwdriver? I need to get this damn camera out of my eye."

Ignoring the odd looks from just about everyone there, Emma accepted the offered screwdriver, then - "Oh, _yuck._" Steve muttered. Bruce winced. "How can you even - no, don't answer that."

Emma handed the screwdriver back to Tony, who took the tool back with considerable reluctance, then Emma ground the little camera under her heel, smiling grimly with only half of a proper face.

There was the immensely satisfying sound of glass, plastic, electronics and metal being twisted and crushed.

"Thankyou," she said, as though absolutely nothing out of the ordinary had happened and taking one's eye out with a screwdriver was a perfectly normal activity. "Shall we go inside?"

"Ah," a voice from the shadows got louder as someone walked towards them. As he came into the light, he was revealed as none other than Nick Fury. "Back from destroying yet another HYDRA base. Well done."

Tony stared at him. "I'm pretty sure that I didn't invite you, Fury. FRIDAY, why did you let him in?"

"Mister Fury has Level Ten S.H.I.E.L.D clearance, sir," the interface answered, her voice as smooth as ever; FRIDAY was completely emotionless. "As a S.H.I.E.L.D Agent, sir, he has access to every inch of this building, including your basement. I hope that this didn't come as a surprise , sir."

"But enough of that," Nick said, ignoring Tony's sudden look of alarm and annoyance at his AI - his basement was where he kept his beloved Iron Man suits. " You're back, and that's the point of the thing. It seems, however, that you have a couple of stowaways."

Nobody moved.

There was the _clink _of something made of metal being dropped, then two people stepped out of the jet. One was a skinny, dark-haired girl, and the boy, maybe her twin, had pale blonde hair and dark eyes like the girl's.

"And you are...?" Nick asked.

"Wanda," the girl said. Wisps of red light flickered around her hands for a second, then disappeared.

"Pietro," said the boy.

"And why, exactly, are you here?" Nick's remaining eye darted between the twins, like he was trying to watch both of them at once.

"You were - " said Pietro.

" - our ticket out of there." Wanda finished. She continued: "Don't be - "

" - scared of us." Pietro finished for her.

Nick studied them for a few seconds, then sighed, rubbing his eye patch. "Fine. Stark, take them to your guest bedrooms. Give them one each."

Tony indicated to the twins that they should follow him; they did so, and left, staring around at their new surroundings as they walked out.

Nick Fury looked at Emma.

"Who are you?"

"Emma Woods, sir." Emma's voice was clear and impassive, but the place where her electronic eye had been sparked, the ragged ends of wires stretching across the hole like their were trying to reconnect.

"HYDRA?"

"Yes." Emma's answers were flat and emotionless. Listening to her low voice, Steve remembered that the Winter Soldier's voice had been like that, before he'd managed to get the assassin back to being Bucky.

"Project Medea?"

Emma flinched, but still answered, her voice still flat. "Yes."

"The only one?"

Emma went white and backed away from him. Her hands touched the wall - her eyes were wild, like a trapped animal's. "I - " Her voice was suddenly trembling, despite the fact that she'd barely said a word.

"I'm sorry." Nick certainly sounded sorry, but his eyes didn't react, staying cold and calculating.

"It's - it's fine." Emma's metal arm twitched suddenly, and she flinched again, the hole where the eyes camera had been sparking fretfully. She stepped away from the wall, trying to not to look at any of them. It definitely was not fine. Her metal hand was gripping her left arm, hard enough to bruise the flesh.

Nick turned away. "Coulson, come here right now!" he barked.

A man in a navy-blue suit - the Avengers immediately recognised him as the recently resurrected Agent Coulson - walked through a door to their left. Nick said something to him that none of the Avengers heard, then they both left.

Emma saw the flash of silver-blue, and reached out with her right hand. She caught Pietro by the upper arm, stopping him in mid-run. Then she twisted his arm up and behind his back, and fought the pressing urge to put a knife between Pietro's shoulder blades. _Blades _\- the word sounded funny now; the bone was blunt and useless, so why name it after a perfectly good weapon? 

Then she realised that many things were blades here. People were trying to imitate them, and here - _here _-

No knives.

Nothing, no weapons.

Not safe.

_Medea. _

"What - _the _\- _hell _\- are - you - doing?" Pietro managed, as his shoulder grated in its socket, sending needles of pain all the way down his arm. He tried to struggle, but the girl's metal fingers were practically crushing his arm.

Emma let go of him, and she fell back against the wall. Pain wracked her body. She tried to scream, but the metal part of her face felt constricting, stopping her from opening her mouth, and her arm was burning with agony.

_It's been too long, _she realised. Another stab of pain made her gasp. She leant against the wall, trying not to break down.

She slid down the wall, feeling agony pulsing through her body. She couldn't speak, and the metal part of her face was heating up, slowly at first, but still enough to aggravate the old burn scars around her forehead, cheekbone and jaw. Pietro caught her with his usual lightning swiftness, and she saw his mouth moving but couldn't hear what he was saying.

White mist seemed to be pouring through her mind, scouring it until it contained only a few words that slowly formed in her mind.

The words she'd been trained - programmed - to hear.

_Medea. _

_Medea, listen. _

She didn't know what was happening - blurred faces and voices, all around her - no space to breathe, no time - a metal arm flashing above her, not her own - her heartbeat slowing down, giving up - screaming, always the screaming - lines of agony across her back - faces dancing through her vision, flickering, changing - Strucker, Nick Fury, Pietro, Strucker again -

_Medea. _

_Obey._

_The whip rose and fell with a crack like a gunshot. _

_The girl screamed, hot blood pouring down her back. They'd chained her to the post so that even with her metal arm she couldn't get away. The whip fell again, carving another line of searing pain into her flesh._

_She screamed again. _

_There was a moment of pure agony, every single wound on her body singing with pain, then she fell against the post, limp and weak from blood loss. _

"_Please," she whispered. "Please, anyone, help me..."_

"_Anyone... anyone, help me..."_

"_Please help me..."_

_Of course they didn't sedate her when they attached the prosthetic arm. _

_HYDRA was really nice like that. _

_They cut open the top and side of her shoulder, and basically removed her entire shoulder joint, which messed up her collarbone and scapula; the doctors had to fiddle around and waste time fixing that as well. _

_Finally, the doctors inserted a metal facsimile of her original shoulder joint, before attaching the main part of the arm to the joint. Then they sewed her up, and waited for her to heal._

I don't know what to do - help me, somebody help - I don't want - can't do this - can't stab them -

"_I won't!" she yelled, as the thoughts raced through her mind. _

_Rumlow stared at her, seeming surprised. "You will." He said, his voice soft. His hand was suddenly on the girl's face._

"_We can terminate you, you know." The threat was bald and obvious. Emma sneered at him:_

"_You wouldn't. I'm... _valuable._"_

"_You think, girl?"_

_Emma smiled, her electronic eye sparking. _

"_But I'm not a girl, sir." Her tone was suddenly completely different, strange and a little frightening. _

_She slapped Rumlow across the face with her metal hand, sending the man staggering backwards, his nose looking broken, spattering blood over his shirt. Emma slammed him against the wall and held him there, her hand around his neck. _

_Rumlow pressed a button concealed in his sleeve and Emma felt pain shoot down her normal arm. She fell to her knees almost immediately, her scream filling the room. _

"_What are you doing?" _

"_I'm not going to tell you. Just be sure that I can kill you, Medea, and that I won't hesitate if I have to._

_The first time she killed someone on a mission, she couldn't quite believe it. It was like she'd been watching herself doing it. Watching the knife go in, then out. She'd been taught that there was a place on a person's back where you could sever their spine and pierce their heart at the same time. _

_The technique was useful. _

_Strange. _

_She'd heard the voice, and felt the pain in her arm. _

_Medea. _

_Medea, listen. _

Obey. 

"Hello."

Emma jerked awake, sitting up fast. Standing in the shadows was -

"Bucky. How the hell did you get here?"

Bucky pulled up a chair and sat down, his metal arm gleaming in the light from the twisted-open blinds at the window. Emma swung her legs out from under the covers, and sat on the edge of her bed.

"Emma, listen," Bucky said. "You need help. You can't keep cutting yourself forever, and you need to stop anyway, before it gets out of hand. Because you are not Emma Woods anymore, and you know that."

"I - I know, but it's the only way."

"You need to stop."

"B-But - "

"Listen to me. It happened to me. I survived."

"You're not sixteen, malnourished, and been in and out of cryo for the last seventy years! You were trained as soldier - "

"And you're Medea."

"_Don't you dare call me that._" Emma's metal arm twitched. The empty socket where the eye camera had been sparked. Her metal hand formed a fist. Once again, she wished that there was some kind of weapon, even a knife, in the room. For cutting, she had to make do with bits of broken glass and things of that sort. She tried not to give in to the feelings that were crowding up around her mind like moths to a flame at the mention of the name.

_Medea - the blue-gold light of the Chitauri Stone washing over her - the agonising burn of the whip across her back - the feeling of molten metal chains constricting her chest when she held the Stone - the terrible pain in her shoulder, the scars that marred her body, their ache a constant reminder that she could never, ever be free of them, free of HYDRA - Medea - _

Bucky reached out, touched her arm. It brought her back to the present again, and he continued talking. "That's what they called you, _Medea. _To control you, right? Get you to do things for them. Like I was just _Soldier._"

Emma nodded, trying to relax. She remembered the horrible, blood-soaked story of the Greek murderess.

"I think they wanted me to be just as cold and merciless and murderous as the original Medea - you know, the Greek myth."

"I know it. You're just as cold, just as lethal as the real Medea. Worse than what I was... what I am." Emma noticed the use of present tense and tried to interrupt him, but Bucky continued remorselessly.

"They trained you - enhanced you. And now look what you are, Medea. Can you stay like this forever, can you control what HYDRA did to you? Sometimes, some days, I feel like they're talking to me again. Do you feel that too, Medea?"

Emma's metal hand curled into a fist again at his words. "Bucky - this morning, I - I had... an episode. I can't control it, you know I can't; I nearly crushed someone's arm, and I wasn't even trying. And the cuts only slow it down. I -" she paused. When she spoke again, her voice was trembling. "I can hear them, sometimes. And the only thing that helps - "

"You need real pain." Bucky said softly.

"Yes," she whispered, looking up at him, a pleading look in her eyes. "Bucky, you remember, don't you? You remember."

Bucky stared right back at her. He remembered alright, from when he'd been the Winter Soldier, unable to say no. The feel of the whip in his metal hand, the vicious, predatory pleasure of seeing the girl writhing and screaming, begging him to stop, as he brought it down. Bucky saw again the way he'd gone over every stoke twice, then three times, until there was blood, so much blood on the ground and on the whip and pouring down the girl's ruined back. But by then, she hadn't been screaming any more. She just stood there, leaning limply against the post they'd tied her to, each breath shallow, either waiting for it to end or for her to die.

"Real pain," he repeated, lost in the memory.

Emma felt every cell in her body ache and pulse in unison when the two syllables ended. _Real pain. _She needed it, maybe even _wanted_ it.

"I don't know what to do if I stop - " She jerked her head at the scabbed-over cuts on her arm, " - doing that."

"Then I'm afraid I can't help you." Bucky stood up. "Goodbye, Medea."

"Soldier," Emma said, inclining her head.

Bucky turned. The door opened and shut with a soft _click_.

After he left, it took a long time for her to get back to sleep. 

Early the following morning, Agent Phil Coulson, impeccable as always in a dark grey suit, sat in front of Emma, looking at the girl. On the table between them, like an accusation, were three thick cardboard file that had the words: _Project MEDEA - Test Subject One._

There was a thin red cut on Emma's left arm, accompanied by multiple half-healed cuts that were scabbed over.

"Why are you doing this, Emma?"

"Y-You wouldn't understand." Emma had clearly been crying.

"I'm sure I would. I've been through a lot."

Emma pulled the file towards her.

"They had a - a routine for me, back in Sokovia. It's what keeps me sane. But part of it - well, most of it - "

Emma pulled a few photos out of the file. They were in colour.

The first one was the girl's bare back, clean and whole. In the second photo, every single inch of her skin from the base of her neck to just above her hips was a matted scarlet mess of blood, cuts, and the unmistakeable, horrible evidence of brutal, pitiless whipping. The deep horrible slashes were everywhere, gash over gash, the raw edges of the wounds overlapping, and it seemed like Emma should have died there; no one should have been able to survive having that done to them even _once_.

Despite the way his long-term memory was screaming at him to stop looking otherwise it would be branded in his mind forever, Coulson picked up the second photograph and looked closer, studying the damage with matter-of-fact method, as though he saw mutilated near-dead people on a daily basis.

In a few places, Coulson could actually see the white of girl's exposed spine through the mass of torn, ruined flesh; the person who'd whipped her had obviously gone over every stroke at least twice, making it deeper and more unlikely to heal. Even in the photo, every stroke seemed to radiate malice and terror and agony, as though the person who'd whipped her had enjoyed it. In the last photo, there was basically white scar tissue instead of skin.

In all of the photographs except the first, Emma's hair was soaked with blood, the natural red made deeper and darker, matted with blood.

Coulson could almost hear the girl's screams, just from looking at the images.

"Oh my - "

"You see? I _need_ it, it keeps me from going insane."

"But we can't - "

"You don't get it, do you?"

"I'm sure that we can simulate - "

Emma resisted the pressing temptation to crush his arm, just to get the message across. "Please." Her voice was low and serious at first, but it was quickly rising to a shout. "_Please hurt me._"

"No." Coulson took the file back and shut it, stuffing the photos back inside. Emma nearly screamed with frustration and pent-up fear.

"_I'm begging you!_" she shouted, not caring that she was crushing the table with her metal hand."Hurt me, _please hurt me!_"

The door opened. Natasha poked her head inside. Behind her, Coulson and Emma could see most of the Avengers, all with early-morning faces except the Russian ex-spy, who was beautiful as ever, her red hair perfectly brushed so that the curls framed her face; Bruce was still in his pyjamas, Steve had a little white moustache of milk on his upper lip, and Tony still had a toothbrush in his hand that was raised halfway to his mouth; his hand had frozen.

The door hit the wall and swung back to close on Natasha's face, but Natasha caught it and held it still.

The seconds stretched, filled with painful silence.

"Who's shouting?" Natasha asked, like she didn't already know.

Coulson looked up.

"Agent Romanoff, we need to talk." he said. "It's about the mental state of Miss Woods." 

Finally they agreed, because there was nothing else to be done. It was a very easy choice to make - either hurt her or kill her.

Natasha made the decision - she would be the one to do it.

They set up the whipping post in the training room, but barely anyone stayed to watch except Coulson.

Emma touched the whip, and a row of tiny, razor-sharp hooks sprang up along the inside edge of the whip.

"Make sure that it always hits sharp side first. And it's going to hook into my back as well - you have to pull hard to actually get the damn things out. You'll - you'll get the hang of it."

Natasha was trying not to look horrified. "Alright. Emma, are you absolutely sure this needs to be done? I hate it."

Emma smiled. "I'm sure."

Natasha tied her to the post so that Emma's back faced her. She tried to lift the whip, tried to raise it.

"It's alright," Emma whispered. "It's perfectly fine. Fine." She laughed softly, a low but unmistakeably a little mad sound; Emma's breathing was soft and fast, irregular and shaky. She was shivering, but not from cold.

Anticipation flooded her with adrenaline and delicious fear. She wasn't sure what had happened to her - now she _liked _the pain, wanted it, longed for it, revelled in the wonderful agony of it.

She tried to reassure Natasha, who was hanging back, the whip held loosely in her hand, obviously reluctant to whip her.

"Just start now, before I - never mind. Don't think about what you're doing, and it'll get easier. Visualise the person you hate most."

No problems there.

The worst part about the whipping wasn't the blood, which was soaking through Emma's white t-shirt; Avengers were well used to blood. It wasn't the fact that the hooks ripped into the old scars and tore them open again.

The worst part was that Emma never screamed. It would have been a waste of energy to scream anyway. She just stood there and took it.

Slowly and methodically, Natasha worked her way down Emma's back, until every white scar was scarlet and there were scraps of scarlet flesh stuck to and in between the tiny hooks.

When it was over, Emma was slumped in the ropes, her eyes half-closed; blood trickling from the girl's mouth and her tongue flicked out to lick it away. A faint smile tugged at her lips.

"Emma?" Natasha dropped the whip, untied the girl and carefully lowered her to the floor. "Emma, can you hear me?"


	3. Chapter 3: I'm Not Calling You A Liar

Age of Ultron Fanfiction Part 3: **NOT CALLING YOU A LIAR**

Title and Song Lyrics throughout: Florence + the Machine's _I'm Not Calling You A Liar _and _June_, from the albums BETWEEN TWO LUNGS and HIGH AS HOPE.

Note: I may have just gone and completely ruined the entire storyline of _Captain America: Civil War_. Sorry, Avengers fans.

_Emma felt the fresh scars on her back throbbing, the pain pulsing through her body, jerking her awake. _

_She was tied to a wide wooden wheel, her arms and legs splayed in a star shape. Her joints felt like they were going to fall off, except for the cold, heavy, familiar weight that was her Vibranium arm, and the ache of the ancient scar tissue on and around her right shoulder, the metal joint clicking. Long, jagged splinters of wood were digging into her back, blood trickling down from the scars. Her metal arm seemed to be melted into the wood. _

"_Why are you doing this?" she shouted into the silent darkness. "What have you made me into?"_

_There was a sudden, stinging pain in the back of her neck. She half-felt something shoot up her spine and right into her brain. _

_She screamed uncontrollably, and convulsed on the wheel. When she was aware of what was happening again, there was one word in her head. _

Medea.

_It echoed in her mind. She wrenched her mangled metal arm out of the wood, then pulled her other arm out of the ropes. _

_Then she collapsed, her mind practically exploding with pain. There were people around her now, grabbing her arms. _

_There was something made of metal put over her face - intense, agonising heat - she screamed - skin bubbled and blistered - metal fused to flesh - _

_And it was over. _

Medea.

Emma didn't feel the pain exactly, even though some small part of her knew that it was pure agony; it felt her, probing her, settling her mind back in her body, much better than the cuts ever had.

She didn't scream. She never screamed, except that first time; it was a complete waste of energy.

Emma felt her body going limp, then Natasha untied her. Emma felt the cold floor under her back.

"Emma? Emma, can you hear me?"

Emma could hear her heart beating, telling her to keep going, keep alive.

"I can hear you," she whispered.

_Ultron did not know where it was, how it had got there or why it was there. It had no gender, no body, it was simply free-floating code. There were gigabytes of untapped data in the recesses of its mind. It knew everything, because it _was_ everything. It could feel - no, it _was_ \- every single object with Internet connection and decent Wi-Fi in the entire world. _

_It began to search through its mind. Its consciousness was as extensive and thorough as the Internet, because it was, basically, the Internet. It was compiled of every tiny piece of computerised information in the universe. _

_Ultron was everything. _

Emma was sitting at the table in her room, reading _Enemy Invasion _by A. G. Taylor. The only problem with the book was that the plot looked a lot like what was going on in real life.

There was a knock from outside.

"Come in."

There was a flash of silver-blue, then Pietro was standing next to her. Emma didn't even look up from her book.

"I just wanted to check on you," he said.

Emma's head snapped up. She glared at him. "I'm _fine_."

Pietro pulled up the second chair and sat down opposite her.

"You're not fine. You only come out of your room for meals, and you only do that once a day - "

"I don't need as much food or sleep as normal, un-enhanced humans, okay! I... I need to stop... wanting the pain. If I try to stop wanting it, maybe I'll gradually stop needing it..."

Under her fingers, a corner of the table crumbled into grey dust. Pietro touched her wrist. "Hey. Watch it."

Emma jumped. The bit of table re-formed. "Sorry."

Pietro looked half-relieved, half-impressed. "That's your ability? Wow."

Emma smiled. "Thanks."

Pietro stood up. "Just tell me you're fine again."

"I'm fine. I just need to stop worrying."

He smiled. "I'll see you around, I hope." He touched her hand, then turned away from her. There was another flash of silver-blue, then he was gone.

_Stop lying to yourself, _Emma thought. The book lay forgotten on the table, fragile paper pages limp and flaccid like something dead. _It'll never happen, no matter how much you like him. _

A slightly more optimistic part of herself argued half-heartedly: _But he smiled at me... _but the internal argument was overruled by the stone-cold HYDRA operative that Emma had become. 

She sighed, and picked up the book again. She realised that her bookmark was gone halfway through the seventh chapter.

_I'm not calling you a liar, just don't lie to me._

_I'm not calling you a thief, just don't steal from me._

_I'm not calling you a ghost, just stop haunting me._

_And I love you so much_

_I'm going to let you_

_Kill me._

"Are you sure you're alright, Emma?" Coulson was writing notes in a book, frowning as he scribbled.

Emma still felt the terrible, exhilarating agony in every part of her, not exactly nice but not torture, not yet. The heavily bandaged scabs and scars on her back were sending little offshoots of pain every time she moved, and were cracking every so often. She didn't mind.

"Fine. I'm fine."

"Then... maybe you could stop destroying the training room? Please?"

Emma suddenly realised what was going on around her. Punching bags, knife targets, beams, ropes and one climbing wall were completely shredded. She barely felt tired, and the strangest thing was that her knife - the HYDRA knife - was in her hand.

"Oh. Um, sorry."

"It's fine. Mr Stark can buy a new one."

_Ultron was sending emails in its mind - although it was technically just sending messages to itself - different, scattered parts, but definitely still Ultron. It sent out something that went like this:_

COME TO ME.

YOU KNOW WHO I AM.

Emma felt the message come in. She answered.

"What are you?"

The huge silvery giant turned to Emma, his eyes glowing red.

"I am Ultron... Medea."

Emma's eyes went cold. Still Emma, but different... evil. She reached for the HYDRA knife at her belt.

"Good." The AI said. "I have people for you to deal with."

Emma looked at him, her hand hovering around the handle of her knife. "Will you hurt me?" she asked. "The Avengers nearly refused. Will you?"

Ultron smiled coldly. "I'll hurt however much you want, Medea." A few smaller robots answered his call. They took Emma by the arms, then waited expectantly for their commands.

"Whip her, torture her, and bring her back to me." Ultron said.

"Thankyou," Emma whispered, as she was dragged away.

"Where is she?"

"I don't know, she's just gone!"  
"You don't think... she answered Ultron, do you?"  
Tony looked up. "Oh God, no..."

Emma was brought back by the robots, and now lay on the ground at Ultron's feet. She was almost unconscious and barely breathing, blood from her torn-open scars pooling around her. She was bleeding in a dozen other places, and there was a deep knife wound in her left shoulder. Her face was bruised, and there was a cut above her eye that was dripping blood down her face.

"Enjoy that?" Ultron looked down at her, and there was no pity in his eyes.

Somehow Emma managed to push herself onto her elbows and then to her feet. She was leaning against the wall next to her for support, but she was smiling. There was blood staining her teeth.

"Thankyou for your hospitality." Emma laughed. A little of the colour returned to her cheeks.

"Are you fit to travel?"  
"Yes, fine. I'll be," she coughed and spat blood onto the ground, "much better in a few hours."

She took a deep breath, then limped across to where Ultron was fiddling with a rectangular box that was large enough to fit a person inside. It looked a bit like a metal Egyptian sarcophagus.

"What's that?"

"It's for regeneration."

Ultron adjusted a few wires, then opened the lid. Emma looked at it doubtfully. Ultron touched her metal shoulder.

"It'll help you recover, Medea. You can't go into battle in your current state. And anyway, I need to check that it works before I start the main experiment."

When they took her out, Medea felt... amazing. It was as though she'd been given an extra thirty years of life - she felt younger and stronger than she ever had during her incarceration at HYDRA.

"Has it worked?" Ultron asked. She smiled.

"So well," she answered.

The silver giant seemed to relax a little. "At last, something to finally give me a proper organic body."

He immediately began prepping the machine for the real experiment. Medea had just been a test drive.

"What's inside it?" Bruce peered through the frosted glass window that was set into the front of the metal box.

Tony looked at it for a second, then said, "Jarvis, run a quick X-ray scan on that box, will you?"

"Yes, sir." The interface scanned the box in less than a second, then produced an exact holographic reproduction of what was inside and slowly regenerating. The tubes and wires that were trailing from the casket shuddered as another pulse of electricity was sent along them.

"_Hell_." Tony muttered. "Ultron is trying to make a body, trying to upload himself into a physical being..."

Bruce joined him at the side of the casket. "What if we could use it to our advantage, maybe upload - "

" - Jarvis into the body! Banner, you're a genius!" Tony finished.

The capital of Sokovia was flying, was overrun by evil robots, and was carrying a Vibranium core that was capable of destroying the entire world.

This was pretty weird by anyone's standards, but Clint Barton was fine with it. He'd been possessed by a god and had seen an army of aliens invade New York, so he was a lot more used to the concepts of _really weird _and _completely life-threatening _than most people.

He checked his bow and quiver for the three-thousandth-time, then headed into the battle.

The robots flooded out of the buildings like ants out of an anthill. And accompanying them was Emma - no, she was Medea now, the Avengers could tell by the cold, emotionless look in her eyes. She was dressed for battle, wearing what looked like black leather - it was probably something synthetic - and masked like Bucky had been. She looked stronger and deadlier than ever.

Emma - Medea - never touched the ground. She was using just about everything as a kind of springboard to keep herself off the ground; robots' heads, bits of flying building, bodies, and running along the roofs of cars. She had a bow and arrows like Clint, and was possibly even more proficient with the weapon than he was, pulling off shot after nearly-impossible shot - and that was just the start.

Medea didn't care who she killed. Any civilian that stood in her way; one touch, and they were dead, her ability allowing her to shut every cell in their bodies down. Soon she was surrounded by corpses, and she was still refusing to touch the ground. She jumped off the side of a building, landed on a car, then back-flipped to spring off a robot's head, neatly dodging the blasts of heat from Tony's Iron Man suit, the beams of deadly energy from the Infinity Stone that was set in Vision's forehead, and Clint's rain of arrows.

Medea sent an arrow straight through Clint's shoulder, pinning him to the ground. She used the nanotechnology in Tony's suit to alter the entire armour, melting it into the ground and trapping him easily. Natasha was dealt with in seconds, three of her own bullets sent right back at her and leaving her incapacitated on the ground, losing blood and on the edge of unconsciousness.

Medea managed to get close enough to Bruce to touch his arm, which immediately shut down the molecules in gamma-ray-altered cells in his body, leaving him unable to become the Hulk. Thor was a slight problem for all of thirty seconds, then, with Mjolnir in useless atom-sized pieces, was sent on a one-way trip straight over the side of the city.

Finally, she caught Steve's shield in her right hand and threw it back at him with deadly accuracy. Even Pietro couldn't catch her, and she brushed off Wanda's visions like they were nothing.

Pietro was running, trying to get all of the civilians to safety - an impossible task. He was keeping out of Medea's way, but just barely; there was a graze on his cheek and another on his neck where arrows had nearly hit him. He could barely see her except for a blur of black that seemed to be everywhere at once.

Then he couldn't see her. It took barely a second for him to realise what that meant, then - _Oh heck, she's behind me! _

Pietro turned, but not fast enough. There was an explosion of cold, sharp agony between his shoulder blades. He felt Medea's breath on his ear.

"Didn't see that coming," she whispered.

_And I love you so much_

_I'm going to let you_

_Kill me._

Pietro felt like the world dissolving into white mist that was bunched around his vision.

The world was speeding up around him, his heart beating overtime; but the rest of him was slowing down, giving up.

His worst nightmare. Not being able to run, to be so fast that everything seemed to stop still around him.

It felt like his limbs were encased in stone, cold and unforgiving.

Just before he felt his heart stop beating, he managed to get the bookmark out of his pocket. Not quick enough, not enough time. It fell from his limp fingers and fluttered to the ground.

Useless.

_And I can hear your heart beating in your chest_

_The world slows until there's nothing left_

_And skyscrapers look on like_

_Great unblinking giants..._

Then someone else emerged from a half-demolished side alley.

Steve struggled to sit up from where he'd fallen, a look of total shock on his pale, blood-streaked face. His bloody shield was lying on the ground next to him - its edge had been lodged in his ribs and he'd wrenched it out. Not a good idea. His hand was now pressed hard against the wound, trying to stop the bleeding - the shield had been stopping the blood from escaping, despite actually having caused the wound in the first place.

"_Bucky._" he whispered.

Bucky looked at him, acknowledging him with a nod, then indicated Medea, who was standing over Pietro's limp body, with a flick of his eyes in her direction.

The message was clear: _Do you want me to get her out of the way?_


	4. Chapter 4

Age of Ultron Fanfiction Part 4: **THE END OF REALITY**

Note: All lyrics used throughout are from the songs _Strangers _and _Sucker Punch _by Sigrid - maybe too many song lyrics?

_Emma felt trapped, confined to one small part of her mind. _

_She tried to comfort herself with memories, letting the words and images wash over her - Pietro's crooked smile, the way he'd looked at her in one frozen moment, even his vehement swearing when she'd twisted his arm behind his back - everything that had happened between them before she'd gone to Ultron felt so precious now, beautiful but fleeting, like winter's last frost. _

_Like strangers _

_Perfect pretenders_

_We're falling over head over heels _

_For something that isn't real_

_It could never be us_

_Just you and I._

_Nothing felt real anymore when she was Medea, everything was fuzzy and unfocused, since they'd spoken to her. _

_The words - soft, whispered Sokovian, echoing in the dark space around her - pulled her down and let Medea take over. She remembered being strapped down, both metal and normal arms cuffed with thick metal - more metal, over her face - electricity - she screamed, her muscles convulsing - then a man, walking at a slow, sedate pace around her, reading from a book with a red cover and a black star on the front - soft Sokovian words, like whispering snakes in her head - more screaming - _

_Then nothing._

"_Medea?" _

"_Ready to comply."_

_Emma remembered one thing very clearly from her time at the Avengers complex: _

_One day, Tony had taken her aside. His face was stony. _

"_What's this about?" she'd asked, but she got no answers. _

_Tony found an empty room, locked the door, pulled up a chair and sat down. Emma stayed standing, her hand going to the long knife at her belt. _

"_Miss Woods," Tony said, not looking at her. "I've got something to tell you."_

"_Yes?"_

"_You think you're so important, don't you?" His voice was bitter, resonating with anger, disappointment and resentment. "You think you need to stay here, you think you need to be safe, that you actually _need _to survive this war with the artificial intelligence that I created." _

"_I -" Emma tried to say, but Tony just kept talking, overruling her. _

"_Emma, I'm here to tell you that you don't need to stay here and you don't need to live - it would be better for us if you died. You don't belong here, you messed-up, half-robot, pain-obsessed kid."_

_His words felt like a punch to the stomach. _

"_Y-You're saying - "_

"_Yes. Get out of here."_

_She could have killed him with one movement, locked her metal hand around his throat and squeezed; but she held back. _

_At her feet, the solid floor began to disintegrate. Emma walked to the door, wrenched the lock out, and slammed the door behind her. _

_Emma tried to see what HYDRA was making her do, but she couldn't see, her vision was blurred except for the occasional flash of silver-blue that were Pietro running... running from her. _

_Then the flashes stopped. She felt blood on her hands. _

_Oh no. _

_Oh, God, no..._

_And it hit me like a sucker punch_

_Just one look and I'm out of touch_

_I'm freaking out 'cause I'm scared this might end bad_

_But I still come back for that _

_Sucker punch._

_Emma tried not to scream - this was her fault, all her fault - _

_This was just HYDRA, playing games with her life, throwing random plot twists into her life just for fun._

_Emma saw what she was doing, but she couldn't control any of it, she was Medea now - cold and cruel. _

_Murderous. _

The hoard of robots flowed in around them, still and silent apart from the low _clank _of their metal feet on the concrete.

Everything was silent for a moment, perfect balance.

Bucky slowly walked towards Medea. Every few seconds, he stopped, looked at her, and then walked on again, like a trainer with a skittish animal. Medea hissed at him like an angry cat, but held her ground, still standing resolutely over Pietro's body like she was trying to protect it in some perverse way.

She took a few steps away from the body, and drew a knife from her belt - the blade was long and thin, very nearly a sword. Thin spears of light shivered along the blade as it shook in her hand; Medea didn't seem to notice.

She cocked her head at him, making an odd clicking noise with her tongue, then stopping, walking on, stopping again, at exactly the same time as he did. She looked like a dog trying to think, trying to predict what might happen. Medea - like all Winter Soldiers - wasn't really supposed to think, just obey. _Allowed to use her ingenuity, but still trapped. _

Bucky stopped suddenly, and bent down to pick up something on the ground, reading the message printed on one side of the bookmark: PROPERTY OF EMMA WOODS. MADE IN 1941. Then he slid it into his pocket.

He walked faster. She tensed, one hand reaching out. It was a good thing she could only use her ability through touch. Waiting for him to get close enough.

Bucky took the bookmark out of his pocket, and held it out to her. The object looked childish and incongruous in his metal hand.

"This is yours."

Medea just stood there, still gripping her long knife tightly in her hand. She was looking at him quizzically, trying to piece together the words like they were unfamiliar, foreign.

Bucky knew exactly what was going through her head.

When both of them had been experimented on by HYDRA, there was no concept of _yours_. You got given training and enhancement and eventually weapons, you were trained how to use them and told what to do with them, but it didn't mean the knives or guns were _yours_, not by a long shot. You were completely and totally owned by HYDRA, and, by degrees, they took over your mind as well.

"It's yours," he said again. He took another step towards her, carefully sliding his hand into his other pocket so that she didn't see, feeling the cold metal of the gun's handle under his fingers. He pulled it out, but Medea didn't seem to notice. She was caught between two worlds now, one where she was one of HYDRA, and one that was infinitely more tragic.

She reached out, touching the metal of his fingers, then taking the bookmark, turning it over, reading it.

Bucky knew that he had to kill her; it was that simple. _Do it_, he thought. _Just squeeze the trigger. _

His eyes latched onto the metal part of her face, the blistered, melted skin around it, the burn scars. He realised that this girl was in an even worse state than him; trapped and hurt and ruined, but somewhere deep inside, still agonisingly human, paralysed with knowing that she could never be truly part of what she was, always separate, shunned, and always hurting, aching with the knowledge of the life that had been taken from her.

Then Emma - not Medea, the blank, unknowing look in her one eye had completely vanished - screamed. She fell to her knees in the rubble, tears leaking from her one eye, the screaming gradually giving way to sobbing, desperate broken sobs that echoed through the destroyed city.

She knew what she'd done.

Emma concentrated; this was going to be the hardest thing she'd ever done. She felt herself separate into a million tiny pieces - her reasoning that she could use her ability through touch, then she could try and touch everyone in a critical condition at once - Clint, Natasha, Tony (who was slowly burning to death) and retrieving Thor, who was still falling. The capital was now at terminal altitude, and the air was starting to get thinner.

Still fighting to stay conscious, Natasha whispered, "_Oh my God,_" as she felt the bullets in her chest disintegrate and the bleeding puncture wounds heal, replacing the blood she'd lost automatically.

Clint felt the arrow that was grating against his shoulder joint break in two, and the wound healed almost instantly.

Tony could feel the claustrophobic compression of his own suit around him, the molten metal dribbling into cracks in the ground, the heat of it making his skin burn and blister. The heat sucked the oxygen from his lungs, and the inside of his throat felt like it was scraped raw. Then the ruined suit cooled down so fast it steamed. The metal twisted, re-forming, the melted metal flying up out of the cracks until, finally, there was a complete suit hanging in the air, as pristine as the day he'd made it. The suit opened, and Tony stepped inside it. "Hello, Friday," he said.

Wanda was still gasping from the pure shock of seeing, of _feeling _her brother die, of feeling part of your mind weaken and die, falling away, down into darkness. She'd experienced Pietro's last moments, of his heart slowing down, stopping. She felt an unseen hand touch her arm, and a whisper of: "_I'm so sorry._".

Thor muttered a Norse swear word, leaning against a wall for support and trying not to be sick. He'd been half-sure that he was going to die.

Bruce felt the shift as the gamma-ray-alterations returned, then felt the anger rising up inside him. He willed himself not to transform now, there was no need. It would only cause more destruction.

Steve felt the flow of blood from his side slow and stop. For a moment he thought he was dying. Then Steve looked down, and saw that his skin and muscle were knitting together, leaving a white scar which dwindled and got smaller, until there was nothing to show he'd been bleeding to death a few seconds ago.

Emma felt parts of her scattering, being blown away. If she'd had a mouth, she would have nearly screamed from effort, of trying to put the right bits back together in the right places. She managed to re-form herself, then shuffled on her knees towards Pietro's body, stroking his face, her tears falling onto his staring, wide-open, dead eyes, whispering a repeated mantra under her breath:

"_I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sor_-"

After about a minute of this, Tony said, "No offence, but shouldn't we get back to the job in hand? Those robots aren't going to stay still for much longer."

For once, he was right. The robots gathered around them were beginning to shift and clank uneasily.

Emma braced her metal arm against the ground and climbed to her feet, rubbing the tears from the eye that was still able to cry.

"Leave it to me," she said. "I can deal with them, but you lot will need to go hide behind something."

"Hide behind what in particular?" Tony said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

"Heck, I don't know. A building?"

Instantly, the Avengers and Bucky scrambled to get behind the most intact building they could find.

"You alright?" Emma called.

Various differentiations on "Yeah," "Fine," and "Wait a sec - What exactly are you going to do?" answered her.

Emma took a deep breath, driving all thoughts of Pietro and grief out of her mind. She knew what she had to do - change the entire molecular structure of the robots and the Vibranium core into something harmless - cotton wool, maybe? - and make sure that there were no ensuing explosions.

Unfortunately, there were explosions.

When the Avengers ventured out from behind their chosen buildings, there was no Vibranium core, and no robots. Pretty soon, S.H.I.E.L.D. shuttles came to collect them from the slowly disintegrating city.

But there was no Emma.

No sign to show she'd even been there except for scraps of robot-metal and the quickly drying tears on Pietro's face.

Vision walked through the pine forests. There was silence, broken only by the occasional rustling of a woodland animal of a bird singing.

He enjoyed silence; it was perfect for him to think.

"Vision?" A voice called.

He turned, staring around, trying to see who was calling for him.

"Is anyone there?" He scanned for life forms, using simple thermal imaging to determine who or what was there.

There was someone lying on the ground a few metres away in the bushes, one arm showing up as strangely cold on the scan. Their heart showed as a slowly pulsating red patch at the centre of their pink body.

Vision's feet crunched on the pine needles as he ran.

Emma was bleeding from shrapnel in her side and there was a nasty wound on the side of her head, probably caused by falling rock.

"You have... to take me in." she whispered, her voice faint.

Vision knew she'd been bleeding for some time, and that she'd probably been unconscious for a good few hours.

"Please, Vision. They're going to find me again, make me into... _her_ again. They'll make me into... that other girl. I don't want... all that to happen all over again. If you know me, if you trust me..." Her voice trailed off; her breathing was shallow and faint, her heartbeat and blood pressure low. She was fading fast.

"Emma," Vision said, "Emma, just hold on for a few more minutes. We'll get you out of here."

Suddenly Emma gasped. "Vision - run - now!" She could hear someone coming through the trees, before any human would have been able to.

"No - I can't leave you here like this - "

"They're coming. Just leave while you can."

Vision could hear people crashing through the pine trees. He turned away from the dying girl. In a second, he was gone.

Far below, miles from the city, a chunk of falling building dropped onto a house, crushing it beyond recognition.

When the dust cleared, a man's family were dead. It took him two days to find their bodies. When he did, he fell to his knees in the rubble, howling his pain and grief at the sky.

"No - no - for God's sake, no - "

He would kill the people responsible for this.

The man's name was Helmut Zemo.

There was the poison of vengeance in his heart.

_He would see the Avengers dead for this._

And he knew exactly who to use.

_The Soldier. _


End file.
